Tram Kitchen 4039 Penn Avenue (Bloomfield; 1 block up from 40th Street) Pittsburgh PA 15224 +1 412 682 2688 Based on Craig Everhart's post a few weeks ago, a friend and I decided to check this place out. In short: the food was absolutely delicious, the portions were generous for the price, and the service was good. The atmosphere is clearly one of a small, family-run restaurant: the place is small (only 8 tables or so), and it was fairly clear it was family-run business. My friend ordered the "shrimp toast (4 pieces)" ($3.00) as an appetizer, and had the "special noodle with meats and fried shrimp cake and special ham" ($5.00) as a main dish. According to him, both were excellent. I had one "HOOGIE (famous taste of Saigon bread with homemade mayonnaise sauce)" ($2.00 each) as an appetizer. They probably meant to call this a "hoagie", because what I received was quite similar to half of an 10" hoagie. The bread was superb (soft and chewy), and so were the other ingredients. (I could pick out cilantro, shredded carrots, some type of marinated pork, and I think cucumber; the remaining ingredients were a mystery to me.) For my main course I had one of the daily specials, the "spicy prawns" ($7.00). It came with a plate of rice, a place of vegetables (cilantro, some form of lettuce (I think), cucumber slices, and something else I can't remember), and a plate of two huge prawns. I eventually gave up trying to figure out the ingredients of the mildly sweet, spicy, and oily sauce covering the prawns. It was delicious. Also worthy of note were the table condiments. They had some Huy Fong Sriracha Chile Sauce on every table (a traditional Vietnamese-style sweet serrano-based hot sauce; it comes in a large, clear, round bottle with a picture of a rooster on the front). Each table also had a bottle of some sort of Asian vinegar (which, unfortunately, I forgot to try), and a bottle of some sort of bean sauce (the closest thing I can compare it to is ketchup). For my prawns, they also brought out some "special hot sauce", which consisted of mashed Thai peppers, water, some sugar, and I think some garlic. It was very tasty. During the course of our meal, we were asked repeatedly what we thought of the food, so I'm guessing they haven't had enough time to get a good feel for what customers do and don't like. They were sincere enough, though, that we really couldn't fault them for it. In fact, I feel a little bit sorry for them, because they clearly don't have a great location--on that block of Penn, there were probably more closed and boarded-up businesses than there were viable ones. Perhaps they'll make enough money off the restaurant to move to a better location. At any rate, the food was superb, the portions were generous for the price, and the service was sincere. I'd recommend this place to anyone who doesn't think cilantro tastes like soap, and I definitely plan to return to try other things off their menu.
Pittsburgh, PA